


The Depths of the Ocean

by IssyLily



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Fix It Fic, I do not accept 8x05, Major character death - Freeform, Mucho Angst, Romance, Tarth, jaime lannister redeeming himself, sorry - Freeform, what a crock of bull
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-17
Updated: 2019-05-17
Packaged: 2020-03-07 02:20:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,487
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18863767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IssyLily/pseuds/IssyLily
Summary: “𝘐 𝘸𝘢𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘰 𝘥𝘪𝘦 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘢𝘳𝘮𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘸𝘰𝘮𝘢𝘯 𝘐 𝘭𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘥,” 𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘢𝘪𝘥 𝘴𝘰𝘧𝘵𝘭𝘺, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘉𝘳𝘪𝘦𝘯𝘯𝘦 𝘱𝘶𝘳𝘴𝘦𝘥 𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘭𝘪𝘱𝘴 𝘵𝘰𝘨𝘦𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘵𝘰 𝘴𝘵𝘰𝘱 𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘴𝘦𝘭𝘧 𝘧𝘳𝘰𝘮 𝘣𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘬𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘪𝘯 𝘧𝘳𝘰𝘯𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘩𝘪𝘮. 𝘏𝘪𝘴 𝘩𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘭𝘰𝘰𝘴𝘦𝘯𝘦𝘥 𝘪𝘵𝘴 𝘨𝘳𝘪𝘱 𝘰𝘯 𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘴, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘵𝘳𝘢𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘴𝘦𝘥 𝘶𝘱 𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘣𝘰𝘥𝘺 𝘵𝘰 𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘧𝘢𝘤𝘦. 𝘚𝘩𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘨𝘩𝘵 𝘴𝘩𝘦 𝘤𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥 𝘴𝘦𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘳𝘦𝘧𝘭𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘰𝘧 𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘵𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘴 𝘪𝘯 𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘦𝘺𝘦𝘴 𝘣𝘦𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘦 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘭𝘪𝘴𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘺 𝘸𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘰𝘸𝘯. “𝘈𝘯𝘥 𝘐 𝘵𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘨𝘩𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘢𝘧𝘵𝘦𝘳… 𝘢𝘧𝘵𝘦𝘳 𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘺𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘐’𝘷𝘦 𝘥𝘰𝘯𝘦… 𝘰𝘳 𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘺𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘐’𝘷𝘦 𝘥𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘵𝘰 𝘮𝘢𝘬𝘦 𝘢𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘥𝘴 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘺𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘐 𝘥𝘪𝘥, 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘐 𝘥𝘦𝘴𝘦𝘳𝘷𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘰.”Jaime goes to King's Landing, and does what he has to. Realising that he is going to die, he makes sail for the island of Tarth, to go back to Brienne to see her one last time.Fix!It fic for 8x05.





	The Depths of the Ocean

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Nikolaj Coster-Waldau and Gwendoline Christie for giving us six incredible years of these two](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Nikolaj+Coster-Waldau+and+Gwendoline+Christie+for+giving+us+six+incredible+years+of+these+two).



> So, 8x05 was a shitshow that broke my entire Jaime/Brienne heart, and I was so enraged about it that I wrote this. Honestly, gifsets of the two of them way back in 2013 is what made me start watching the show as a lonely teenager, and now as a bit-more-functioning adult, I'm heartbroken at what they've done (don't get me started on the finer points of it all, just know I thought it was bad). This is how I would've done it. HBO - give me the big bucks, and I'll make it happen for you. Enjoy...

“Ser Brienne. It’s him.”

Two words. Two words that she had both longed and dreaded to hear. Her hands did not shake – she had trained herself out of that a long time ago (it was no good to be a knight whose sword-hand shook at the first sign of danger) – but she could not stop the tremble in her lips, nor the sudden pain in her chest as if Oathkeeper itself had been forced through her heart.

The days since he had ridden away from her at Winterfell had become unbearably long. The sun dragged across the sky as if it did not wish to pass, and the night settled in almost begrudgingly, the moon and her stars uncomfortable and hesitant in the sky. It felt as if her whole life had come to a grinding halt; her mission complete, the war over, no battles left to fight. The righteous light she had followed ever since she first picked up a sword at six and put it down thirty years later… it had been extinguished. Directionless and lost she had returned home, hopeful to find some semblance of a purpose. And perhaps to leave the memories of what had been – and what could’ve been – behind her, locked away in another land where she could not touch them anymore. Where they couldn’t hurt.

“Where?”

The words snapped like icicles falling from a branch, and she regretted them, seeing Podrick’s blanched reaction. He stared down at the floor of Evenfall hall and directed his answer towards the stone there instead.

“By the beach, Ser,” Podrick replied, “He ran aground but a few minutes ago.”

Brienne dropped her head into her open palm, her elbow propped up on the armrest of her throne. Not quite one made of a thousand broken swords, but one that gave her rule over this land all the same. She was sure this one was just as cold as the one in King’s Landing.

She anticipated Podrick’s next words before the squire even had the time to put them into a sentence, and she blinked away tears that she could not afford to shed in this hall. Not that she would deign to waste any more on this man. Even if he had broken her heart. Even if he had left her in the snow. She clenched a fist. No more.

“He’s asking for you.”

She rose from her makeshift throne and stood high above all the noblemen left to serve her house. She towered above them, ants beneath her, men who had scurried away during the Great War and hidden on the isle. She hated keeping company with them, hated that they had abandoned their oaths at the time for which those oaths were written, but it would not do to banish subjects. Not when there was so much to be repaired. And it was not as if she were not used to the company of men who had broken their promises.

She had heard some of them talking about her. When she was a child, they had called her _naïve_. Now, still carrying the weight of all that she had done to keep herself and the people she was sworn to alive, they had the gall to call her _bitter_. And it wasn’t bitterness. It wasn’t. It was that she finally understood the pain of losing: not of being defeated in a joust, or the constant rejection she had faced her entire life. The pain of having something so beautiful in the palm of her hand, and it falling from her grasp. She understood the pain of having gold, and having to give it away.

She gave Pod a tight-lipped smile.

“Of course he is.”

Jaime Lannister was not in good shape. She hadn’t expected him to be, but even so it was clear. This was not a man returning to her begging for forgiveness. He was here to die.

She was accompanied down to the beach by a few members of Tarth’s council – men eager to get a look at the man who had bedded the first female knight in the history of the Seven Kingdoms (which was perhaps a kinder consideration than she had expected, though still not one that she cherished) – and her loyal companion Podrick Payne, who had refused to stay in Winterfell without her. But the moment she caught sigh of dirt-blonde hair set against the wet sand and the deep blue sea, she banished them all. This was not a moment she wished to share with anyone else than him.

If the contrast of his hair against the shore was noticeable, then the carmine streaks of dried blood up the sides of his boat, moored nearby, were moreso. There were wounds in his sides, both infected beyond the skills of any master living or dead. His face was pallid, bearded and thinner than she remembered: the face of a man who had been drifting out at sea for far too long.

If he had been half a god before, then surely now he was Icarus, brought down from the heavens to her feet.

And yet, as he turned to look at her – with visible effort, and a deep groan that seemed to resonate through the sand to rattle her bones – the mere sight of him, of the green eyes that had consumed her on so many nights in the North, began to stitch together the mess in her chest that had festered for too long.

She lied down in the sand next to him, too close to the ocean so that every wave that made its way inland soaked through her boots. She barely noticed.

His voice was a rasp. It hearkened her back to the last time she had seen him so ill, to that bathtub in Harrenhal all those lifetimes ago, the first time she had looked at him and saw a man worthy of her respect. He had fallen so much further since then. And yet he was still the most beautiful thing Brienne had ever seen in her life.

“I’m sorry,” he said, quiet enough that she could have mistaken it for the breeze. They were coming to the end of winter now, but Tarth always caught the end of the season worse than the rest of Westeros. The sky above them was clear and brilliantly blue, but there was a chill in the air that should’ve made her shiver. And yet…

“I’m so sorry,” he repeated, reaching for her hand and bringing it to his cracked lips.

She knew then. She understood. He had not left for love – or rather he had, but not love for his twisted sister. Love for her. And at the end of it all, he had come back to her.

“It’s okay,” Brienne murmured back to him, shifting on her side to look at him. They latched onto one another’s gaze and the rest of the world fell away from them for a few moments at least. It felt as if they had dropped off the edge of existence. And she wished with all of her heart that they could stay that way, just for a little longer.

Jaime was struggling with his breathing, so Brienne took the reins of the conversation.

“It’s okay,” she said again, even though it wasn’t, even though nothing about this was okay, “You came back. It’s okay.”

He gripped her hand as tightly as he could in his left. She noticed his golden hand was nowhere to be seen. It was probably destroyed in the dragonfire that had left King’s Landing nothing more than a burnt out crisp, a hollow shell of a kingdom that had once been the envy of all the world.

Jaime smiled at her, and though it was all but an echo of the ones he had gifted her in the past, it warmed her better than any fire.

“I wanted to die in the arms of the woman I loved,” he said softly, and Brienne pursed her lips together to stop herself from breaking in front of him. His hand loosened its grip on hers, and traversed up her body to her face. She thought she could see the reflection of her tears in his eyes before realising they were his own. “And I thought that after… after everything I’ve done… or everything I’ve done to make amends for everything I did, that I deserved to.”

He didn’t say it like a fact, instead like he was asking her permission. The man who had killed a king, who had betrayed the throne many times over, who had fought the dead by her side, asking her permission to die in her arms. And it was more than that, she realised – it was a plea for her to tell him, to finally let him go knowing that he had redeemed himself. The look on his face betrayed his fear that she would reject it.

She breathed in heavily.

“You do deserve it. You deserve more.”

He closed his eyes and inched across the sand, pressing his lips against her forehead. In a brief moment of madness, she laughed a little at the thought that had they been standing, she would’ve had to have ducked for him to reach. But the laughter died in her throat when she realised that Jaime Lannister would never stand on his own two feet again.

He couldn’t die lying down.

Brienne pulled herself up into a sitting position, and, with all the delicacy and grace that she had never mastered, she managed to get Jaime up from the sand too. He immediately slumped onto her shoulder, pressing all of his weight against her side, and Brienne knew she would’ve carried every pound of it for the rest of her days if it meant he would survive this.

But the gods were not that forgiving. Nor were they that cruel.

They sat in silence for a small time, clutching onto each other, both aware of how little time they had left.

He was so close that she felt his voice on her neck.

“This is a nice island you’ve got here wench. I saw it once, from a distance, a long time ago.” He stopped for a moment, reminiscing, stuck in a memory of the past. “Back when I thought I was never going to see you again.”

The pain laced through his voice in that exclamation lanced through her like poison. It wasn’t like them to be so sincere with one another. It hurt more than if he were insulting her.

“Well unfortunately for you…” Brienne murmured into his ear, trying to lighten the mood, despite knowing it would do little.

Jaime bit back almost immediately, “Never unfortunately. _Never_. I had the luck and grace of all the gods to have met you.”

The hairs on the back of her neck stood up, and she held him closer.

“Well now I know that you’re dying,” she said, her voice rattled, the words coming out in a broken fashion, like she had forgotten how to speak, “You’ve never been so complimentary of me in all of your life.”

“Not out loud, anyway.”

She couldn’t listen to this. It was a war inside her head. She knew… she knew this was where Jaime would draw his last breaths, and she couldn’t deny him the chance to tell her what he felt. But hearing him say all of these things – had he told her that he loved her? How was she supposed to ever come to terms with that? – confirmed that he knew his time was up too.

She couldn’t listen to it, so Brienne changed the subject.

“I heard from Lady Sansa that the Red Keep was all but destroyed. You didn’t have to go there. You didn’t have to do this to yourself.”

She tried to keep the anger out of her voice, not wanting their last conversation to become an argument. Although it maybe would’ve suited them both – maybe it would’ve been the perfect ending for them. Or even better, a way to keep him alive – Brienne knew Jaime would never allow himself to die before he had bested her in a fight.

“I did,” he replied, and the conviction in his voice was enough to convince her there and then. “I caught up to her as she was clambering into that sailing boat, with some of the finest Lannister jewels in a satchel alongside her. Enough for a whole new life across the Narrow Sea, where they would never know the evil passing through their midst. Euron Greyjoy was accompanying her – she could never go anywhere without a suitable bedfellow, I suppose. And it wasn’t going to be me.”

The deep wounds penetrating his torso were then explained. At least his being here meant that there was one less tyrant unaccounted for. After the devastation wreaked in King’s Landing, the statuses of many people was just unknown.

Brienne bit her lip to keep herself from cursing Cersei Lannister. After everything she had done, she had the gall, the nerve, to try and just run away from it all. And yet, her brother was here in her arms – which could only mean than the Kingslayer had added another count of regicide to his name.

She looked at him and decided Queenslayer suited him rather well.

“You could’ve let her go,” Brienne said softly.

Jaime turned as well as he was able and looked her in the eyes, and shook his head like she was a young child.

“You and I both know that I couldn’t.”

Brienne felt tears falling down her cheeks, and this time she made no attempts to stop them. She couldn’t stop the desperation in her voice when she choked out, “She wasn’t worth your life.”

Jaime kissed her then, and she found the salt and blood on his mouth, and decided it was the best thing she had ever tasted. His breaths were laboured now, and it was not a long embrace, but she took it. She would’ve taken anything he was willing to give her in these moments.

“Maybe not. But the lives of all the people she hurt… when she destroyed the Sept of Baelor, the hundreds of Lannister men sent to die in her stead,” Jaime said, and now his voice was strong, almost as strong as it had been in Harrenhal, and the devastation and rage he surely felt overcame the pain his body was in, “My own _son_. Giving them justice… for what she did to them. That was worth it.”

Brienne could never forget how much Jaime had truly lost. For all of his teasing and jokes and comradery, there was a veil she had hardly dared to touch, a part of him she knew could never be fixed. Behind it was the agony of a man who had learned that he did not belong to his own family, and the unbearable pain of losing them a hundred times over, in a hundred different ways. The last of the Lannisters, one of the most noble houses in the Seven Kingdoms, and here he was, in her arms instead.

“I couldn’t have lived the rest of my life knowing she was out there, alive, unpunished,” he carried on, but the anger dissipated, and the next words were soft, “Not even if it meant I got to live it out with you.”

“I… Ser Jaime…” Brienne protested, but he cut her off, as he was so prone to doing.

“If it had been another way… I think you and I could have been happy for many great years.”

In his mind, he had seen them on Tarth, far away from the feuding and bickering and obsession with ruling. A quiet life. A peaceful one. A life where they would spar in the courtyard and then later in their chambers too. Maybe they would’ve had a babe or two. He knew he would’ve liked that – to have had the chance to truly be a father.

Brienne smiled at him then, despite it all. “We had many great days,” she said to him, and he mirrored her smile, knowing that she was right.

One day there would be stories of the two of them, and songs and ballads written too. There would be literature in all the realms of the Kingslayer and the Fair Maid, of the Golden and Sapphire Knights, of Jaime Lannister and Brienne of Tarth.

“And perhaps even years would not have been enough,” he murmured.

And despite knowing that they would both live on long past their deaths, the weight of what could’ve been hung over them, a heavy shadow cast by nought but the destruction of a dream they had both been chasing all of these years.

“Jaime,” was all she managed to say before he cut her off again.

“it’s a shame wench,” he whispered, “I should’ve quite liked to have grown old with you.”

If leaving her at Winterfell had broken her heart, then that speared her soul.

“Stop it,” she gasped through tears, pleading with him. He kissed her neck, or maybe he just rested there, unable to move anywhere else. “Please don’t,” she said, and her words must’ve hurt him too for he closed his mouth and said nothing for some time.

Brienne could feel his breathing slow further next to her, and she knew that the hour was coming. It wasn’t fair. They had slew the dead during the darkest hour of history and lived to tell the tale. They had fought bears and dragons and all the shit that this life had thrown at them. Did they not deserve a happier ending? Did they not deserve some peace?

But she knew that for Jaime, perhaps this was his peace. For a man who had survived so much, maybe it was his time. It wasn’t for her to decide. She would plead to the gods but she knew they would not listen. Maybe she just had to let him go.

His coughed loudly and specks of blood landed in his beard. He slumped down from her shoulder back onto the sand, laying down on the beach where she had played as a child.

She had never seen this coming then. She had never even imagined that all these years later, she would be here with him, watching the world end.

“Brienne,” he managed to say, though the air was escaping from his lungs, the infection and rot and sepsis sprinting to finish him, “Please look at me. _Look at me_.”

She acquiesced, and to her surprise, his face was the very image of serenity. She lied back down next to him, knowing that this was the last time she would hold him. He closed his eyes, exhausted at the price of still breathing

“I love you,” she told him, quietly, gently, like it was a balm that would soothe all of his ills, “After everything that we went through, everything that we had to do. I love you.”

She stroked his cheek, held him in her hands the way she had when she had begged him not to leave her. She wouldn’t beg him now. There was nothing she could do. She kissed his hand, his forehead and wrapped him in her arms.

“You made me a good man. You saved me. You are the most wondrous creature I have ever encountered. My life… would’ve amounted to nothing without you,” he murmured, finally overtaken, the words taking a lifetime to come together into a sentence.

He felt his body slowing to a halt. It was indescribable. He had always expected he would die on the battlefield, and that it would be quick. He had never imagined he would take weeks to slip away. When he had clambered into that boat – having disposed of its two greedy occupants – he had set a course for Tarth, despite realising that he might never get there. But he had known that he had to try. If there was even a chance he could see her again, it was worth it. And maybe the gods were merciful then, that they had given him this last hour with her.

Jaime opened his eyes for the final time, and looked to Brienne, to the woman he had made a knight, the woman he had loved for the best part of his life, the woman who had given him back his honour and made him whole. If the gods offered him the chance to live until his ninetieth nameday if he gave her up, he would spit at their feet. All his life was worth it, for the joy of having known and loved her.

“And your eyes…,” he mumbled, staring up just as his last breaths escaped from his lips, “ _Like all the depths of the ocean brought to the surface, in your eyes…_ ”.

 


End file.
